


This River Runs Red

by azephirin



Series: Dean/Tonks 'verse [5]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling, Supernatural
Genre: 1000-5000 Words, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Aurors, Choices, Crossover, Dark, Family, Other, Post-War, Pregnancy, Sequel, Unrequited Love, companion story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-10
Updated: 2010-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reckoning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This River Runs Red

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer**: All these characters belong to a variety of people and entities who are not me. Thievery from REM for the story title (from "[Cuyahoga](http://www.retroweb.com/rem/lyrics/song_Cuyahoga.html)") and cut text (from "[Green Grow the Rushes](http://www.retroweb.com/rem/lyrics/song_GreenGrowTheRushes.html)").
> 
> **Author's note**: This is a companion story to "[Belong](http://archiveofourown.org/works/50492)," and will make much more sense if you read that first. [Requested](http://azephirin.livejournal.com/90641.html?thread=1032977#t1032977) by [](http://pxr5.livejournal.com/profile)[**pxr5**](http://pxr5.livejournal.com/), who asked for _Dean/Tonks, worry_, but unfortunately I don't think this is the fic you wanted.

He Apparates into Andromeda's upstairs hallway. Sam knows she will want to see him, as much to reassure herself that he's unhurt as anything else, but there aren't many people Sam wants to see right now. He wants to be curled up somewhere dark and quiet with Oliver's arms around him. He wants his brother back.

But he left Oliver with Remus, trying to get the kids out, and Sam's here. He doesn't know why he's here, precisely, except that he hasn't seen Tonks for hours, maybe not since the battle ended, and also it's probably the right thing to do.

He wants to hate her. Has tried to hate her. Has tried to tell himself that she stole his brother from him. Except that she gave him her family, and not even in exchange: Dean belongs to Sam as much as he ever did. Which is to say, he doesn't.

Tonks's bedroom is tucked away at the end of the hall, at the back of the house—it's not big, but it's cozy, with a fireplace and a sloping ceiling. Sam spent most of his school holidays in this house, and many hours of those holidays were passed up here, on the floor of Tonks's room, playing chess (at which she's terrible) and Exploding Snap (at which she's an utter shark). He stops at the door, listens—there's no noise. He's not sure he could handle tears, not without dissolving into them himself. He needs to be calm right now, as rational as he can be. The decision isn't made, and he needs to be in a cool frame of mind to make it. Dean will never forgive him; he knows that. But there are countervailing concerns.

She may be asleep; Sam hopes so. She needs rest. They all do. He opens the door as quietly as possible.

But she turns over swiftly, a quick enough response that Sam's sure she was awake. "I don't—" she starts, but then stops when she sees him.

"Hi," he says, suddenly at a loss for words.

Her smile is a valiant but unsuccessful attempt. "Sam." Her voice is hoarse, but there's no hitch or hesitation. Thank God. "Are you alright?"

Sam closes the door and comes to sit on the edge of the bed. He takes the hand that she offers. "About as alright as you are." This close, he can see her eyes, swollen and with dark circles underneath. Her hair, long and tangled, falls in disorder around her face, and she doesn't bother to push it back. "You look awful," he blurts out, and regrets it immediately.

But, amazingly, she smiles, and retorts, "And you look like a right tramp, you git."

It's true: His hair is in sorrier shape than hers, shaggier and probably dirtier, and his robes are covered in various amounts of sweat, dirt, and blood. It's probably not worth washing them; better to just throw them away.

Sam refuses to take that metaphorically.

But she looks so tired, exhausted and aged past her years. "I mean it, Tonks." He tries to make his voice gentle, though he thinks these past few years—these past few hours—may have made him forget how. "Have you gotten any sleep at all?"

"I'm sure I have," she says, far too lightly, "or I'd be hallucinating. Have you slept?"

Sam's not sure he can remember the last time, which probably makes the answer no. He thinks he might have napped a day or so ago, but his mind provides details of the solidity of Oliver's head on his chest, of his brother's arms around him, and Sam knows that he and Oliver haven't been together for more than five minutes over the past few days, and knows that he and Dean are well past those years, by a matter of more than a decade.

And once again he can't hate her, because he knows she hasn't been alone with Dean any more than Sam has with Oliver.

"I'm not sure," Sam tells her. "Not in a few days, I guess."

Her eyes narrow, and for a moment the resemblance to Andromeda, always strong, is nearly overwhelming. "Sam, really. Where's Oliver? Find him and get some rest. Both of you."

He shakes his head, and suddenly can't meet her eyes. "I…I can't. If I fall asleep—" The words are there, but suddenly his breath isn't, and he has to stop. "If I fall asleep and then wake up and he's still not here, it means…" Again, the words are there, but he can't say them. "It means it's real."

"I know," Tonks says, choking up, but she keeps going. "Except the opposite. I keep thinking that if I fall asleep, I'll wake up and he'll be here. Just like he's been out training with—with Alastor, and they're just coming back late…."

The sentence disintegrates, and Sam surprises himself by soothing her, running his thumb over the backs of her knuckles. He can feel scabs there—they've all been banged up over the past week. "Tonks," he says, and he's suddenly filled with a terrible and inexplicable tenderness. He wishes it were appropriate to gather her up and rock her—and it would probably make him feel better, too—but she's his brother's wife, and there are some barriers that are inviolable. "Don't cry," he goes on, stupidly; who tells a new widow not to cry? "You're exhausted. I know…I understand why you don't want to sleep. But I think you'll feel better if you do." Hypocritical advice, but no less true for that.

She shakes her head.

"I'll stay with you," he offers. "Or your mum can." It occurs to him that a Sleeping Draught might work, so he suggests that as well.

She shakes her head again. "I know he's still going to be gone no matter what. That's not it, not completely."

"What do you mean?"

She doesn't answer immediately. He'd worry—she's one for perennially answering before thinking, is Nymphadora Tonks—but he's not sure precisely what to be worried about. Besides, of course, the obvious fact that she loves someone who is dead. Which they have in common.

Then she makes whatever decision she needed to make, and pushes the words out. "I don't know what a Sleeping Draught would do to a baby. If a person is pregnant, I mean."

Sam freezes.

He fights off the shock-induced paralysis and puts his hands on her arms. He's not sure whether he means it to comfort or to keep her from looking away. Words fail him, and then escape him unbidden. "Tonks. Oh my God. You're pregnant?"

She gets out, "About four weeks, maybe six. I only found out a couple of days ago," before disintegrating into tears again. "I didn't tell him. I didn't tell him," she repeats, "because I was supposed to be doing the spells—" She keeps going, but the sobs get worse, harsher, making her words incomprehensible. It doesn't really matter, though, until he picks out of the garble, "And I was scared he'd be angry at me—"

There is almost nothing in this world, Sam thinks, that could make his brother angry with Nymphadora Tonks. They bicker, disagree, roll their eyes at each other, but in all these years, Sam has never seen either of them angry at the other one. "Why in God's name would he have been angry at you?" All Dean's ever wanted was to have a family. To settle down, have children, work on his car, watch his tomatoes grow in the yard. He is—was—one of the best Aurors there is, and one of the worst-suited for the job.

"Because we were supposed to wait! Wait until the war was over and it wasn't a completely mad time to try to raise a child and we weren't risking our lives every day! We talked about it! We talked about it and I agreed and I don't know what I did wrong—"

Something in Sam unfreezes, and the decision makes itself. If it wasn't sure before, he is now. He murmurs to her, strokes the wreck of her hair, tells her that it'll be alright. It will be alright. He'll make it alright—for her, for the baby, for Dean. He's not a good person, but he can do this one good thing, at least.

She calms down a little, though it's still hard to understand her. "My mom will be overjoyed, and you'll be the godfather"—_no_, Sam wants to say, _I'm the worst person imaginable for that, you want somebody good, somebody pure, not somebody twisted up and dark who's going to be dead in some very finite number of years, find somebody else_—"but I didn't tell him and now he'll never know that he's the father of a beautiful son, or a beautiful daughter, it doesn't really matter to me—"

He cuts her off by putting his arms around her. She buries herself in his chest, and he holds her as tightly as he can. Somewhere on earth there are unspoken rules against this sort of thing, and a few minutes ago Sam even cared about them. They're not even the sole survivors of any of today's tragedies. But it feels as though they are, because no one else alive loved Dean like they do. He whispers to her, as soothing as he can make it, his hands cradling her head. "Tonks. Tonks, don't worry. I said it'll be alright, and it will be."

"How can you say that? How can you of all people possibly say that?"

"Because I know." He works one of the tangles out of her hair, runs his other hand gently up and down her back like she's a sick child who can't sleep.

She rears back, though, and her eyes are angry—the desperate rage of grief. "Is this a Seer bit? You can look into the future and tell me that it doesn't matter that my husband's dead, that your brother's dead…."

"Of course it matters," he says; his voice catches at the end, and he repeats it. "Of course it matters. But it's not the only thing that matters."

"What are you talking about?"

"'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.'"

"That was Harry," Tonks spits, "not us."

Anger wells up in him, deep and cold. He's stronger than she is, her slender neck fragile under his hand—for a short, sharp moment he does hate her, because she's slept next to Dean every night for six years, and she still can't save him. Or, at least, she doesn't know how.

He moves his hand from her neck to her shoulder, breathes carefully in and out. She doesn't know. She is skillful and knowledgeable and there are many things she does know, but she doesn't know this: what happens when you take a box, a picture, bones, and graveyard dirt, and bury it at the center of a crossroads. He makes sure that his voice is nothing but calm when he says, "Ssh, really, you need to sleep." Inspiration strikes him, and he adds, "It can't be good for the baby, being exhausted like this. How about a Calming Draught? They're not as strong as the Sleeping Draughts, and maybe that will be enough to let you get some rest."

To his great relief, she agrees. "Okay. A Calming Draught. But a weak one."

He Apparates to the infirmary at Hogwarts. Madame Pomfrey is with a patient, so he waits until she's finished to intercept her. She looks him over, eyes observant but worried, with dark circles under them. She looks exhausted—exhausted and, more than that, old, her wrinkles deep-set. She cleaned him up after innumerable Quidditch injuries, and she always seemed hurried, determined, and dauntless. Now she seems all too human.

He tells her what she needs, and she nods without comment—no doubt thinking it's for him—until he says, "Can a pregnant woman drink it?"

She looks perplexed, and then her eyes widen in some mixture of surprise and horror. "Nymphadora?"

"No one knows. Please don't—"

"The secret is safe," Madame Pomfrey interrupts. "Healer's Oath. How is she?"

"As well as can be expected," Sam says.

"And you, Samuel?" Her eyes are still observant, and kind.

He can't quite meet them. "I'm about the same, I suppose."

She looks at him for a moment, pausing in what's so far been constant motion. She steps toward him and he prepares himself for a hug, but she just touches his arm. "I'll go and get the potion," she tells him. "It'll have no ill effect. Are you sure you don't want a double?"

He shakes his head. In general he doesn't like the loss of control over one's mind. The decision's made, but one wants clarity of thought when dealing with demons.

He Apparates back to Tonks's room with a small covered cup. She drinks the contents, and he can see when it takes hold. "How does it feel?" he asks.

She curls up in the blankets. "Everything's so slow," she says, and yawns.

He sits with her, strokes her hair until she's asleep. The earlier anger has dissipated, and the strange, mournful tenderness is back. He kisses the top of her head, then stands to Apparate out and get what he needs.

+||+||+

 

Ten minutes later he's at the crossroads in Hogsmeade.

 

+||+||+

 

At first he thinks he's done something wrong: The figure that appears is male. Sam keeps his hand on his wand and schools his face into blankness, but his mind whirls: Their father told them very little about this ritual, but he was pretty clear on the fact that the resulting demon would have a female form. Female, and in a black dress, according to most reports. _Like it was their dream girl come to life, son_—Sam was only eight or nine, lying in the backseat reading a book, but his heart twists as he remembers his father's voice from the driver's seat, talking to Dean. _I guess if the devil's gonna take their soul, he makes sure to do it in a package they'll like._

Sam walks over to the man.

Sam's stomach sickens, but he keeps his face still, his breathing even. This person is clad in battered jeans slung low on his lean hips; the grey blazer, though, sets off the lines of his broad shoulders, and the dress shirt beneath is a crisp, pristine white. It's as though someone has meshed Dean and Oliver together: the height, the muscular frame, the full lips, the proud nose. This person's hair is golden-brown, like Dean's, but his eyes are dark and deep-set, like Oliver's. Sam has never seen Oliver in anything but jeans and robes, though he can imagine unbuttoning a white cotton shirt to press kisses on the skin beneath it; he has seen Dean in a suit or blazer only a handful of times, but he has never, of course, dared touch more than is fastidiously appropriate.

"Shall I guess why you've summoned me?" Oliver's Edinburgh burr in Dean's low tenor.

Breath in, breath out. Hands steady. First rule of negotiation: Look like you're ready to walk away.

"If you can't figure that out, I'd prefer to speak with someone who can."

The man—except it's not a man, only on the outside—laughs and steps closer. "Oh, Sammy, of course I know why you're here. That handsome brother of yours laid out like a corpse—oh, my mistake. There's no 'like' about it. And now you want to make a deal."

_His life, you give me his life and ten years, and you can have me._

Sam says nothing.

The man's eyes flash red as he smiles—lips so much like the ones Sam has kissed, run his thumb across uncountable times (or not at all). "So what's your offer, sweetheart?" he purrs.

"The usual."

"From you, darlin'? But you're not exactly usual, are you?"

"Then why don't you tell me your offer," Sam suggests.

"Well, you give me that soul—for what it's worth—and I'll give you your brother's life. That's the basic deal. But I'm not one for the basics." He looks Sam up and down, like an inspection of goods. "Of course you'll want some time with Dean. To say good-bye—and whatever else comes to mind. Five years."

"Fifteen," retorts Sam.

"Fifteen! Samuel, I love making braw boys happy, but even I can't do that. Ten."

Ten's an even number, a decade, and his father had made it sound typical for this sort of deal. "Fine," says Sam. "Ten. Do we shake on it?"

"Don't rush, pet, we'll get there. Ten. But you know," continues the demon, rocking back on his host's heels, "I've been doing this a very long time, and life plus ten gets a bit monotonous after a while. Why don't we add some spice to it. Just a wee bit. You get your ten years—and you get your brother."

"That's already part of the deal," says Sam. "That's why I'm here to begin with."

"You're not understanding me—of course you get Dean's life. I'm throwing in something extra—we'll call it a bonus. Don't tell my supervisor; I'll get in no end of bother. We resurrect your brother, you get your ten years, and you get Dean too. Yours in mind, heart, and body, as in love with you as you are with him." He reaches up to stroke Sam's cheek, fingers long and competent, with a tenderness that Sam would close his eyes and turn his face into if he didn't know it was false.

"You can't do that," Sam whispers.

"I can bring him back from the dead, Sam." The demon's voice is gentle. "Making him fall in love with you—well, he already loves you, has since the day you were born. Just a wee nudge, and he's yours completely."

Sam tries to speak normally, but it still comes out barely audible. "He's married."

"Not legally. And if you're worried about the pregnancy, don't. Women lose babies all the time. She's only a few weeks in, not enough to do any damage if she miscarries. She'll still be able to have children; you get ten years with Dean." He traces Sam's eyebrow. "Just kiss me, Sam, and the deal is sealed."

His hair is every bit as soft as Sam always thought it would be, bristly at the ends, the skin of the nape of his neck delicate, the muscles shivering involuntarily—or perhaps even voluntarily—under Sam's touch. Sam lets himself imagine it: ten years with Dean. Falling asleep with Dean in his arms, waking up next to him. Kissing Dean while he's drowsy and warm, tracing the length of his spine as Dean blinks the sleep out of his eyes. Loving Dean like his heart is going to burst from it. Knowing that Dean loves him back in just the same way.

Dean would never forgive him.

Sam drops his hand, steps back, shakes his head.

"Dean's life, ten years," he says. His voice is shaking, but it's above a whisper, at least. "That's all I want. I don't want any more than that."

"But, Sam, you do." The demon's hand drops to his hip. They're standing so close. He even smells like Dean, clean and crisp. "Oliver loves you, and he's always been a little bit attracted to Dean. Just a push in the right direction, and he won't have a problem with it."

Sam steps back again, farther this time, enough so that the only scent is the smoke from the fires at Hogwarts. "I don't want any more than that," Sam repeats. "Just the basic deal."

"Then I'm afraid I can't do that," the demon says regretfully.

"Of course you can!" Sam snaps.

"But is it worth my time? I can have that sort of deal any day. Right now, there's a wee sweetie outside Paris, a lovely girl whose heart is nothing but pure and whose sister is dying of leukemia. She's willing to give me that shining untarnished soul if I'll just make Aurelie better. Not like you can say that, can you, pet? All that love for your brother that went just a bit wrong; all that darkness you try to tamp down. You're not much cop from where I'm standing."

Sam gathers himself. "Then why are we standing here?" he says, trying to sound bored. "If we can't come to an agreement, I've got some cleaning up to do, and you've got a date in France. Am I right?"

There's a pause, and then the demon says, "Five years."

"It's supposed to be ten!"

"Ten if we do it on my terms. Five if you insist on yours."

"That isn't—" Sam bites back _fair_. Of course it isn't fair.

"Your brother's life and five years. Take it, or I'm off for my rendezvous with Cécile."

Sam turns as if to go.

"I'm not bluffing, Samuel. You've got three options: ten years on my terms, five on yours, or no deal at all. If you walk away, you walk away, and your brother keeps rotting. Your choice."

Sam stops. The world is silent for a moment, or maybe it's just drowned out by the thundering of his heartbeat.

He walks closer to the demon and says, "Five years."

"You sure about that?"

"Don't fucking ask me again. Five years."

"Sam, you won't get better marks for being good. You go to hell after five years or ten, no matter what."

"I said five."

Sam tips the demon's head up and kisses him hard.

After a moment, the demon steps back, licking his lips. "I knew I picked the right outfit today. The deal's done, five years, and if you try to get out of it, Dean drops dead again. By the bye, he'll wake up as soon as you walk in the room, so I'd get right on that, before anyone starts contemplating logistics. Cheerio, Samuel Winchester. I'll see you in five years—and may I say, you were delicious."

The demon escapes its host in a rush of inky, oily smoke, leaving a confused and coughing but otherwise unharmed Muggle man. Sam Obliviates him, points him in the direction of the nearest Muggle village, and starts in the other direction, pacing himself until he's far enough away to Apparate. Once the man is out of sight, he can do it safely: There's no one else about, and Aurors are trained to Apparate without the usual popping noise.

The former host disappears over a hill, and Sam's knees give way.

The sob is wrenching, more so for being unexpected, and he lands hard on the road surface. He tries to rein himself in, needs to get back to Hogwarts, but he can't. He tries to stand, to take the few steps that will get him into the underbrush, but he's shaking too hard, and he winds up crawling instead. He pulls his knees to his chest, muffles the sound as best he can, praying that everyone is concerned with the end of the war and that nobody will walk by and hear him. It's as though his body is being racked by something beyond his control. _There's nothing to cry about,_ he tells himself. _Dean will live; his baby will have a father. I'm not going anywhere I wasn't headed anyway._ But it doesn't help, and he covers his head and lets himself be battered like a ship in a storm by the noises that want to come out of him.

He has Dean back. He's lost Dean forever.

Some amount of time passes before the tears subside. Sam has no idea how long: He's not wearing a watch, and he wasn't paying close enough attention to the sun to be able to compare. It's still daylight, so that's something. He doesn't have time to lose, though. Now especially.

Shakily, he stands, balancing himself against the trunk of a tree. He must look a fright, robes in an even worse state than before, hair a mess, face splotchy and eyes red from his fit. Everybody looks bad, but he can't scare Tonks—if he's lucky, he'll be able to convince her that everything was a mistake, that Dean was simply knocked unconscious (_never mind that Araminta Browning, the best Healer we've got, tried and tried and nothing worked_) and has awakened. Speaking of Araminta—she also knows every appearance-related charm there is, and would be immediately able to recite something. But he can't exactly ask her at this particular moment. He tries _alewer_, typically used to soothe burns—he has no way of knowing whether it works, of course, but his face does feel a little less raw.

He stands there for a few minutes in the afternoon sun. The wind is gentle, and the tall grass sways around his knees. Now he can hear some sounds in the distance, probably from the village—human cries that could be victory or grief, or both at once. God knows Sam understands that. Part of him thinks that he could stand in the bright quiet all day, but he knows it's just a pause, temporary, and that a variety of things await him back in the inhabited world.

 

+||+||+

 

He should have known that she would fight him. She struggles, kicks, aims for groin and stomach, and _Petrificus totalis!_ is on his lips before he reminds himself that he needs her unfrightened and cooperative.

"Are we going somewhere?" she asks once she realizes it's him. She lies unresisting in his arms, but her expression is still slightly unsettled, and it occurs to him that an Auror, and one of nearly two metres in height besides, is probably unused to being carried about like this.

"Tonks, I need you to..." He trails off, not sure how to continue. _I need you to not raise a fuss when you see your husband raised from the dead. I need you to refrain from asking too many questions._ Neither of which have ever been her strong points. "I need you to trust me," he finally says.

Her answer is immediate. "Of course, Sam. You know I do."

He does know, and she shouldn't.

He tells her to close her eyes; she protests, but he reassures her. "Everything's fine." It's almost true. "Nothing happened—nothing bad, anyway." He draws her head back to rest against his chest like a sleeping child. "Just close your eyes."

She does.

* * *

**Next story: [Fables of the Reconstruction](http://archiveofourown.org/works/50856).**

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://theladyscribe.livejournal.com/profile)[**theladyscribe**](http://theladyscribe.livejournal.com/), [](http://zooey-glass04.livejournal.com/profile)[**zooey_glass04**](http://zooey-glass04.livejournal.com/), and [](http://roguebitch.livejournal.com/profile)[**roguebitch**](http://roguebitch.livejournal.com/) for the betas, to [](http://astrothsknot.livejournal.com/profile)[**astrothsknot**](http://astrothsknot.livejournal.com/) for the Scot-pick, and to [](http://katomyte.livejournal.com/profile)[**katomyte**](http://katomyte.livejournal.com/) and [](http://cormallen.livejournal.com/profile)[**cormallen**](http://cormallen.livejournal.com/) for their patience with my OMGBBQing about this. I hope no one is unduly freaked out by the (one-sided) Wincest, but I also hope that you understand why it served the story better not to warn for it. All comments are welcome—I would really like to know what you think!


End file.
